Dr. Larson's Blog

The Two Component Aether

Aether 1. Once we advance to realizing that special relativity may not indeed be a correct interpretation of our physical world, we are then led back to the original hypothesis of an aether - and to some unanswered questions. Recall that prior to relativity, since light was known to be a transversely polarized wave, the logical conclusion was that there must be some solid substance that is oscillating in order to form those waves, and that substance was called the aether. It was also known (and is still considered valid) that light, electricity, and magnetism are all related phenomena. And the equations that are used by physicists for all of these phenomena were first formulated by the great James Clerk Maxwell in 1865. Maxwell, along with all reputable physicists of his day, was a believer in the aether, but he never did arrive at a satisfactory modeling of his equations based on an underlying aether.

Aether 2. After the SSC was cancelled, the government humanely allowed several of us to hang on for a time. Prior to the SSC there was a world-wide shortage of about 400 Ph.D. accelerator physicists, but that got filled as striving individuals from around the world studied for the chance to come to America and join the effort. After the cancellation of the project, there was a world-wide glut of about 400 Ph.D. accelerator physicists, and so it was not easy to find work. There were computers to shut down gracefully though, so if we couldn't find other work, we could assist there and learn a saleable skill for our futures. It left time however for research, and it was during my final year there that I got my absolute theory paper published, wrote up a preon paper (to be discussed in future posts) and also worked on a new aether theory.

Aether 3. The starting point for my aether theory was, of course, light. I started by agreeing with physicist's ideas from the 1800's that light was best explained as an oscillation of an underlying solid. And, similar to waves on a string, I assumed that the underlying solid must be under some sort of tension. Normal waves on strings are waves of a solid (the string) under tension, so that was a good start. It was fairly easy to go from that assumption to show mathematically how such an aether would support light waves. But there was still much more to do. As mentioned in an earlier post, James Clerk Maxwell had developed a set of equations that unified a theory of light, electricity and magnetism way back in 1865. Maxwell's equations are still considered completely valid by physicists today. And so my next task was to try and understand the electric and magnetic phenomena that are also described by Maxwell's equations - and understand that through the postulate of an aether.

Aether 4. After realizing that light shows us that we have an aether under tension, the next simple thing to try and evaluate was the physics of electric charges. It is well known that likes repel and opposites attract, and it is also well known that the force of this attraction drops off as the square of the distance between the charges. On a separate matter, it is further known that if you have some solid, like a balloon, and you expand the inside of that solid, then the thickness of that solid decreases as the square of the radius. And so my next proposal was that the solid aether was not compressible, as this would lead to a phenomena that had the correct fall off with distance from any disturbance.

Aether 5. While the concept of a solid, incompressible aether under tension did lead to some of the mathematics of Maxwell's equations, it did not lead to all of it. At this point I spent some months trying to understand what the gap was, and I finally came to the realization that something must be missing. Very often, whenever I have been stuck on a physics problem, whether theoretical or in the design of a particle accelerator, the reason is that something is missing. In the case of the aether, I realized that the important thing I was missing was that there is not one substance occupying all of space - there must be two!

Aether 6. By postulating that there are two types of aether and not just one solid block of a single substance, it was fairly straight forward to derive Maxwell's equations from some very simple underlying assumptions about the forces on the aether. The tension force again allowed light to be easily explained as a wave of both of the components moving together in harmony. The electric field was identified as resulting from a force that occurs when the two components are separated from each other. The proposal was that not only are each component a single solid block with each part attached to neighboring parts (that is what a solid is) but also that each of the two blocks are attached to each other point by point. If something comes along to move one, and only one of the components, then that component will have a separation from its counterpart, and that separation was recognized as a static electric field. That "something" that could move one and only one of the components was identified as a "free" chunk of one component of the aether, and the equations tell us that such free chunks of aether are what we know as electric charge.

Aether 7. The observation that the aether must be made of two components instead of one, along with the identification of free aether as electric charge, led immediately to a very satisfying result concerning charge conservation. It had been known for decades that whenever a positively charged particle is created, a particle with an exactly equal but negative charge is also always created. But it was never known why. In the two component aether model, charge is identified as a "free" chunk of aether. In the model, aether is usually in solid form, with each piece of aether strongly attached to its neighboring pieces, and it is also attached to its counterpart piece. (The counterpart piece is a piece of that second type of aether - the anti-aether.) Charge formation can occur when a small amount of the attached aether becomes free from its attachment to its counterpart. And, since it is detaching from its corresponding anti-aether counterpart, an equal and opposite amount of the anti-aether is freed at the same time. The freed aether is charge, and the freed anti-aether is the equal and opposite charge. There is no way in the model to produce one piece of detached (free) aether without producing an equal amount of detached anti-aether, and charge conservation was now explained.

Aether 8. The two component aether model also led to a very satisfying explanation of what was known as the displacement current. In the physics of Maxwell's equations, there are two types of currents. Normal currents are those made from charges in motion. But the equations involve a second current, called the displacement current. The displacement current had been known about for roughly 150 years, but for about the last 100 years it had been thought of merely as a curiosity in the equations. However, viewed from the two component aether model, it was clear that normal currents were the flow of free chunks of aether (recall that a charge is just a free chunk of aether). But the satisfying result was that displacement currents were identified as the flow of the attached aether. Hence, another result was found that added support to the theory. Both normal currents and displacement currents were the result of a similar phenomena - aetherial flow. It was just that one type of flow involved free aether and the other type involved attached aether. This result was unexpected, and when it simply dropped out of the model I felt it was compelling evidence that the model was indeed in excellent agreement with nature.

Aether 9. One of the questions that 19th century physicists had was how solid bodies could pass through a solid aether. After all, if one tries to head-butt a tree the results are not good. Solids generally do not allow for other solids to pass through them. So the aether must have some rather magic properties in that regard, and that is one of the reasons scientists were so ready to dismiss the aether when relativity came along. Importantly, the two component aether theory has an answer for this issue. In the two component aether theory, any charged particle (which is freed aether) is indeed postulated to have a flow force directed against it as it moves through one of the aether components. But the theory also postulates that a flow force exists from the other aether component that is equal and opposite to the first. Hence the total force is zero, and charges are free to move through the aether with no net force. It is also a fact that these two counter balancing flow forces are two of the postulates that are required to lead to Maxwell's equations, so this result is a critical part of the theory. Since every part of our bodies are made up of charged particles, all of our parts can move through the aether with no net force, since each of the composing charged particles can. Since all objects are made of charged particles, they can all freely move, even those as large as the stars and planets. And having charges move through solids should not seem all that strange once you think about it - electrons move through solid wires all the time in what is commonly called electricity.

Aether 10. During my derivation of the two component aether model there was one aspect of things that I found distasteful, and that involved the mass of the anti-aether. When I worked through the equations, I had to assume that the tension and the mass of the anti-aether were the negative of the tension and mass of the aether, respectively. I couldn't at the time see how to avoid this in the math. Hence, the two component aether model required the introduction of the concept of negative mass into physics. Later, I found that this aspect was the aspect that theorists found the most appealing.

Aether 11. With the derivation of Maxwell's Equations from a Two Component Aether now complete, it was time to submit the paper for review. Since I had already had my absolute theory and preon models rejected by the Physical Review, I was under no illusion that it would get published there, but I still wanted to go through the process. I was quite glad that I did. At this time the SSC had been cancelled and I was working as a computer person there, closing down the systems. (And picking up skills that might get be a job in the outside world.) So there was no publication committee to reject my efforts this time. When the first round of reviews came back, one reviewer noted that I had missed a fundamental length in my derivation. I was quite happy he or she pointed that out, and I put it back in and resubmitted an appeal. While sitting at my desk one day I got a call from one of the reviewers. This was a very odd, as it was against all the rules. But he said to me "you know we have to reject this, right?" And I said that I fully understood. By now I was aware that certain things just can't be said, and that basically if anything was important, it probably could not appear in the esteemed journals. He told me he thought the work was quite important, and so he wanted to check with me first. So the reviews were completed, and it was of course rejected by the Physical Review.

Aether 12. Conclusion. I do not recall if I tried any other journals between the Physical Review and Physics Essays, but at the end of the publication process my work was published in the peer reviewed journal Physics Essays. You can see a copy of it here. For this paper, I could no longer use the SSC byline. I had found a job as a designer of a beamline for Fermilab's Positron Emission Tomography accelerator project and was working as an independent contractor. And so the byline just lists my home address (at the time) on this one. The paper itself is very terse. It is short, but it can be difficult to get through. And it has no pictures. So a few years ago I redid it as an online video and added a lot of pictures to aid the understanding. I also included a quick review of vector calculus. It is now one of the products available at bookwormbiz.

Aetherial Speculations

Aether Speculations 1. In my next series of posts, I will have some fun with some future "science-fiction" possibilities concerning my aether model work. On the more boring, science-fact level, the model has historical importance. Maxwell worked to his dying day looking for an aether model that would form the basis for his famous equations, and so such a model has some importance from a purely theoretical perspective. But on the other hand, aetherial science also has the potential for some practical importance, although at the moment we are quite far from being able to realize its potential. One possible practical result involves future space travel. Presently the "scientific consensus" of "settled science" believes that there is a universal speed limit in the universe - nothing can go faster than light. This is a result of relativity. But once we set aside relativity, and identify light as being a wave upon an aether, other possibilities arise. Perhaps the consensus is wrong, and we really shouldn't ever consider any science settled. Perhaps we can alter the aether in such a way as to overcome the speed of light limit. But there are other intriguing possibilities as well.

Aether Speculations 2. I've known about some speculative science-fiction possibilities concerning aetherial control for quite a while now, but I never put them in writing. That is because these possibilities are VERY speculative, as will become clear in future posts. Up to this point in my efforts, everything I have done has been based solidly on known experimental data and fully sound math and my work is still usually viewed as "fringe" and I have had extreme difficulty getting my ideas published or known. The speculations in the upcoming posts will be seen to be past the fringe and I didn't see how they would help. But I might have been wrong about that. The speculative aspects might just be the thing that grabs people's imagination. But be advised that the aether speculations are just that - speculations, and that typically a lot of my speculations turn out to be incorrect. That is where scientific review often helps, as errors can be found in the process to arrive at sound science - and none of the atherial speculations have ever been reviewed. Another thing holding me back was consideration of man. Often, new breakthroughs in physics are used most quickly in a destructive way. But after thinking more, I realized two critical points. First, aetherial control will likely require enormous resources and I don't even fully know how to do it myself. And second, man already has nuclear weapons which have enormous destructive capability, so it is unlikely that aetherial control will make matters much worse. Since the applications of aetherial control that I envision are extremely beneficial, and we already live with the negative consequences of truly phenomenally destructive power, and since this will be almost entirely pure speculation anyway, I will proceed.

Aether Speculations 3. Before getting into some of the intriguing possibilities that might be enabled via aetherial control, I want to start by identifying how we might actually start to achieve bulk aetherial control. Recall that in the aether model, the aether is made up of two equal and opposite solids, and that charge has been identified as small chunks of those solids that get separated from the normal solid body (freed). These small freed chunks (charges) can move around within the normal solid surroundings. That is - electric charge IS the aether; the only thing different about electric charge is that it is freed aether, whereas normal aether is confined to two big solid masses. Hence, one can envision making a shell of charge, and such a shell of charge would, if it is dense enough, isolate and separate the aether that is within the shell from the aether which is outside of the shell. But recall that the aether has two types, so we need to do this with the other type too. So one would also have to make a shell of anti-charge to also isolate and separate the anti-aether inside and outside of the shell. In this way, one could fully isolate the full two component aether inside and outside of the shell. This would create an aetherial-bubble. Electrons contain charge, and positrons (the anti-matter component of the electron) contain the anti-charge, and we know how to make electrons and positrons into hollow beams. We also know how to focus and expand beams using magnets. Hence, it is theoretically possible to make shells of aether and anti-aether that could isolate one region of aether away from the solid mass. Theoretically, we could make an aetherial-bubble, and that could lead to some interesting possibilities.

Aether Speculations 4. The previous post mentioned how we might be able to make an aetherial bubble by forming counter moving beams of electrons and positrons and focusing them appropriately. But a rather important question remains. Just how dense must the electron and positron beams be? And herein lies the problem. We don't really know. Nothing in the theory tells us how dense the aether is. (At least not yet.) So we really don't know how intense our electron and positron beams need to be to isolate our aetherial bubble. If it is the same as solid densities, our task to make an aetherial bubble will be nearly impossible, and if it is the same as nuclear densities it would be even more difficult than that. But it is possible that the density is much less, and that it is within reach of presently available technology. We really don't know. Hence, as is often the case in science, it is up to experiment to decide just how dense our beams need to be to make an aetherial bubble.

Aether Speculations 5. A second issue pertaining to the creation of an aetherial bubble is that electron beams and positron beams are inherently "hot". In this case, "hot" means that there is significant internal random motion. Hence, if we try to make shells of charge with such beams in order to make our aetherial bubble, it would be possible for holes to open up in the shells due to the random motion of the particles in the beams. And holes in the shell would preclude a clean separation between the inside and outside of the aetherial bubble. Yet, if the density of the aether is small enough, this latter problem could be overcome by beams of enough density so that the probability of a hole is very, very small. However, a more ideal situation would be to form self-connected sheets of charge. But of course that situation involves issues even beyond the present speculations. In any event, although substantial technical problems exist, for our present purposes we can now see that forming an aetherial bubble is at least within the realm of speculative possibility. So we can next move on to look at the interesting speculative technologies that might come about via aetherial control.

Aether Speculations 6. Previous posts mentioned how we might be able to separate out a portion of the aether to make an aetherial bubble, but the practical use of aetherial control technology would be if we could move the aetherial bubbles once they are formed. To move them, we would need to move the positron and electron shells that form the boundary of our bubbles, and it is well known how that could be done. By changing the magnetic fields of the focusing magnets in just the right way, we could, in principle, move the separated aether through the normally existing background aether. A previous post mentioned that the densities needed may or may not be achievable with today's technology. But even if such densities are achievable, generation of positron beams is by itself something that is not trivial, as it involves the generation of large numbers of the anti-matter equivalent of the electron. But, while not trivial, such beams are made routinely in labs. And once the beams are formed we could indeed move our aetherial bubbles by simply changing the strengths of our beam focusing elements. And since the focal properties would be moving the beams perpendicular to the motion of the aetherial bubbles (squeezing them) it is even possible to consider cases where the bubbles will move faster than light.

Aether Speculations 7. Aetherial Transporter Beams - 1. The first technological advance that aetherial control devices may lead to involves simple transportation. In standard (Star Trek, I guess) science fiction, "transporter beams" involve a scrambling of the atoms that make up something (often a person) and then "beam" those atoms to a descrambler where that something is reconstituted. That standard concept has never been one that could hold up under much scrutiny, since the information content required to do it, along with energy concerns about dis-assembly and reassembly are quite problematic. But an aetherial control device is a different idea entirely. In an aetherial control transporter, beams of electrons and positrons would surround the aether itself as well as anything and everything inside of it. Then, the aetherial bubble would be moved, carrying its contents with it. Once at its destination, the electron and positron beams would be turned off, and the contents would now exist in a new place. In many ways it is not that different from a car. In a car, you get into a shell and the air within the shell moves along with you. In an aetherial control transporter you get into a shell (an aetherial bubble) and the aether within the shell moves along with you. No large information is needed, and there is no dis-assembly and reassembly of your atoms required.

Aether Speculations 8. Aetherial Transporter Beams - 2. Aetherial Control Transporter Beams would lead to a tremendous improvement in many areas of life. Roads would no longer be needed, and no more road kills of wildlife. Instead of roads, we would need large pipes to contain our electron and positron beams along with magnets and stands to properly guide our aetherial bubbles from place to place. Garages would not longer needed. Nor would parking lots. Instead travel destinations would only need aetherial terminals for people and things to move in and out of the aetherial bubbles. Properly engineered, aetherial transporters would be far safer than presently existing modes of transportation, since the aetherial bubbles would each be confined in their own one-way pipes, with no possibility of collisions. And this is just one of the many benefits possible should mankind achieve Aetherial Control.

Aether Speculations 9. Aetherial Transporter Beams - 3. One of the biggest advantages of aetherial transporters would be the time it takes to travel. As mentioned earlier in these posts, it may be possible to move our aetherial bubbles at speeds approaching, or even exceeding, the speed of light. This would have huge and beneficial applications for mankind. All of the hours spent commuting would be gone, as people could step into their pod and be transported in minutes to whatever destination they desire. The time spent traveling would be the time it takes to get to the nearest pod, and from the destination pod to the real destination, plus any waiting for scheduling of the aetherial transport. If desired, people could likely go home for lunch, even though they work 50 miles away. Our 22 hour trip from Dallas to Wisconsin could be done in minutes; likewise, trips from New York to LA, or Chicago to Tokyo - minutes away.

Aether Speculations 10. Aetherial Transporter Beams - 4. The wonderful advances postulated for aetherial transporters described so far have a drawback however, and that is safety. Inside the aetherial bubble everything will be perfectly safe, as you'd be surrounded by a shell, but otherwise everything would be perfectly "normal". And inside the pipes (carrying the electron and positron beams in a vacuum), all will be well, since any aetherial bubbles in any pipe should all go at the same speed so that collisions are not possible. But what happens if a pipe leaks, or a magnet fails? In such a case, catastrophe could ensue. A pipe leak would cause the electron and positron beams to fail, as would a magnet failure, and such a situation would likely crash the transport. Of course this is not too different from a plane disintegrating at 25,000 feet; but the issue here is that safety concerns still loom large.

Aether Speculations 11. As discussed in previous posts, an aetherial transporter is somewhat similar to a car, in that a shell is formed that surrounds that which is being transported. But there are significant differences. In an aetherial transporter, a bubble of aether would be formed within the normal aether that occupies all of space, and that bubble would then be controlled to move through the other, normal, aether. And that means that it is possible that solid objects that exist elsewhere in the normal aether may even expand and flow around the aetherial bubble and then recombine once the aetherial bubble passes through them. If that proves to be the case, travel in an aetherial bubble would involve traveling along with the aether inside the aetherial bubble; we would not travel through the normal aether as we do now. This implies that the entire process could be very safe, as the bubble would simply guide to the side anything that might otherwise collide with it along its travel. Except for the need for the vaccuum tubes to contain the electron and positron beams, you could think of aetherial transport as "tunneling through" what already exists. One could tunnel through an oncoming train, car, or even an entire planet or star.

Aether Speculations 12. Aetherial Starships - 1. The need for all those pipes and magnets are a significant drawback to using aetherial control for transport. So the question arises - could we perhaps form an aetherial bubble from the inside? Could we set up electron and positron beams on some internal platform, and then steer those beams to surround us? If we could do that, could we keep all of the magnets and vacuum systems internal, so there would be no need for large infrastructures of pipes to enable transport? If we could do that, everyone could have their own aether-car, that could tunnel through things in its way. Any failure of a system would only fail for a single aether-car, and mass casualties could be avoided. And once we have a self propelled aether-car, with all of the aetherial shell generating equipment on the inside, it is possible to consider a larger version of an aether-car that would contain living quarters, kitchens, food supplies, internal power, and all of the other things needed for a group of people to engage in deep space exploration. That is, self-propelled aether technology would allow us to build an aetherial spaceship.

Aether Speculations 13. Aetherial Starships - 2. It is certainly theoretically possible to form electron and positron beams from the inside of an aetherial starship and then bend them around into a shell. The bending needs to be done by magnets, and it is possible to have one face of a magnet on the inside, so that is theoretically possible. But one problem then becomes one of propulsion. Here, it is important to remember that the way the proposed aetherial transporters work (from earlier posts) is to have magnets that dynamically focus the beams so that the shells move through space. How could we do that from inside? I don't believe we can. So we need some other way to get our starship to move. One thought is to form our electron and positron beams into a saw tooth shape. After all, our positron and electron shells are moving through the background aether, and perhaps we could use that background aether as a "footing" from which to push our starship through. But here a problem appears - recall that the force on an electron (or positron) is zero as it moves through the aether. Hence we would not get any footing to push against. But recall further that there is a force on the electron from one component of the aether, and it is just that the force from the other component of the aether fully cancels it. So the way to achieve our "aetherial drive" will be to indeed form our electron beam in a saw tooth fashion, but form a positron beam within which it can move that does not have the saw tooth shape. That way, the electron saw tooth would push against (have a footing on) the electron counterpart of the background aether, while the positron counterpart of the background aether is pushed to the side so it does not provide the opposing force. In this way, a net force is obtainable, and we will be able to both propel and steer our aetherial starship. By nesting several such drive mechanisms one inside of the other, each one could, in principle, achieve a near speed of light with respect to its next nested shell. In this way, faster than light travel may be possible with such a starship.

Aether Speculations 14. Aetherial Starships - 3. Having a saw tooth drive mechanism, internally sourced, folds back into our previous discussion about aetherial transport devices, as this same technology is the technology that would make aether cars possible. And aether cars would be the transport mechanism of choice from an orbiting spaceship to send personnel to a planet below. And with our speculations about aetherial transport devices now complete, it is again worth a comment at the required technology. As hard as it may be to just form an aetherial bubble, forming moving ones inside tubes (for transporters) would involve vastly more effort, and forming beams internally and then applying a saw tooth profile upon one of them (for starships) would be harder still. Also what about "the other side" of our vacuum system containing the beams? We can't have an outside pipe moving with us. Hence not only would we need to form electron and positrons into beams, but we must make self-connected sheets that don't need an outside vacuum barrier. So there is a lot of work to do before an aetherial starship can actually be built. But I hope it is fun to think about!

Aether Speculations 15. Aetherial Time Travel - 1. Beyond advances in transportation, there is another possibility of aetherial control that may be even more important for mankind, and that is the possibility of aetherial time travel. It is well proven in labs that if you accelerate a beam of unstable particles to nearly the speed of light that they take longer to decay - in some cases, much longer. This effect, called time dilation, was postulated by Larmor and incorporated into the Lorentz Equations in the early years of the 20th century. Time dilation is also a feature of Einstein's special relativity, and it is pretty much a known fact scientifically. But from an aether standpoint, this phenomena can be understood by a postulate that as particles travel through the aether, they also travel forward in time.

Aether Speculations 16. Aetherial Time Travel - 2. At this point in the postings it is important to review what it means to travel forward in time. Consider the possibility that you have a watch on your hand that also records the date. If you were to instantaneously travel forward in time by a minute, when you get one minute into the future your watch will be one minute behind. If you travel a year into the future, your watch will be a year behind. Those are discrete travels into the future. If it is instead continuous, instead of a sudden jump into the future, your watch will simply "run slow" as viewed by those watching you travel into the future. To you, as you travel into the future, your watch will look normal. If we make the rate of slow down large, other people would see you move extremely slowly - an eye blink may take weeks or months to complete. And what you would see would be the sun go past quickly, or even just a flash of light (day) followed by a quick dark period (night). Traveling forward in time has no philosophical difficulties with cause and effect (causality), whereas going backward in time would. (You can't go back and kill a grandparent if you only go forward in time, going backward in time would allow this impossibility.) And, as said in the previous post, from an aether standpoint, traveling forward in time is exactly what is happening in the known scientific fact of "time dilation".

Aether Speculations 17. Aetherial Time Travel - 3. Once it is understood that things travel in time as they travel through the aether, the obvious question is what if we move the aether instead? Previous posts have speculated on the formation of aetherial bubbles for transport, but if instead of moving what is inside them to a new place, what if we simply generate an "aether wind" and blow that wind past the bubble's occupants? Provided we can get that aether wind to a speed close to the speed of light, what will happen is that the occupants should travel to the future at a rate determined by the speed of the aether wind. To arrange for such a system, we would want to make a doughnut shaped pipe and use our magnets to shape moving profiles of electrons and positrons such that the electron and positron shells force the aether inside them to move at great speed. Once done, we could have an aetherial time projection chamber that will project its inhabitants into the future.

Aether Speculations 18. Aetherial Time Travel - 4. An aetherial time projection chamber would have great practical benefits for mankind. The first benefit comes in the area of health care. Rather than having emergency care centers staffed at odd hours with possibly fatigued health care professionals, accident victims could be placed in an aetherial time projection chamber and sent into the future where the best possible staff could treat them. If something unexpected begins to occur during an operation, they could be sent further into the future when a calm, well thought out decision could be carefully executed, possibly bringing in a different specialist. For people with diseases that have no known cure, they could be sent far into the future to a time when a cure is found. Rather than having nursing homes, elderly could be kept at the homes of their children, who send them into the future when they need to be away at jobs, possibly having their parents come out just one day a week. And people could even possibly be sent to the future to a time when aging itself would be cured.

Aether Speculations 19. Aetherial Time Travel - 5. Aetherial time travel would also enable great promise in areas other than human health. Rather than deal with food spoilage, food stocks could be sent to the future with no "sell by" dates needed. Species on the verge of extinction could be sent to the future where better knowledge could be used to preserve them. Rather than holding up the construction of projects once a subspecies is found, researchers could be given ample time to collect specimens to send to the future.

Aether Speculations 20. Conclusion. I hope you enjoyed the previous posts on aetherial speculations. As mentioned at the outset, all of the speculations are just that, speculations. None of the speculations have been reviewed, and the idea of the saw tooth formation of one beam within another has not been thoroughly thought through - we may need a different way to propel and steer a starship. Not mentioned in any of the speculations is the role of energy in generating aetherial control, and energy considerations could be enormous. The famous equation E=m-c-squared informs us that the energy associated with moving through space must be very large if we move at speeds approaching the speed of light. At this point it is unknown if generating an aether wind will require such large energies or not, nor if moving within an aether bubble will require such large energy. Even if the energy is small, the technological hurdles of all of this are enormous with today's technology. But it was fun to speculate. And now the speculations come to a close. Next, after the first of the year, I'll begin my story on my thoughts on the basic building blocks that make up our world.